Jared Olar: It’s (almost) the end of the world as we know it

We’re just about there. Trillion-dollar budget deficits four years in a row. The federal government operating without a budget for three years’ running. Unprecedented credit rating downgrades of the sovereign debt of a lengthening list of nations, including our own. Gargantuan, frequently intrusive government.

By Jared Olar

The Enterprise, Brockton, MA

By Jared Olar

Posted Feb. 17, 2012 at 12:01 AM
Updated Feb 17, 2012 at 5:15 PM

By Jared Olar

Posted Feb. 17, 2012 at 12:01 AM
Updated Feb 17, 2012 at 5:15 PM

» Social News

We’re just about there.

Trillion-dollar budget deficits four years in a row. The federal government operating without a budget for three years’ running. Unprecedented credit rating downgrades of the sovereign debt of a lengthening list of nations, including our own. Gargantuan, frequently intrusive government.

Dissolution of faith in civic institutions and the rule of law. “Recess” appointments when the Senate is not in recess. Flagrant violation of the First Amendment by demanding that Catholic institutions pay for abortifacients, contraception and sterilization.

Yes, the signs are all around us, and we’re seeing more of them every day. We’re just about there.

At the culmination and conclusion of Western civilization’s secular liberal experiment, I mean.

These are truly revolutionary times we’re living in. So many things are now acceptable and commonplace that within living memory would have been outrageous or unthinkable to most people. How did we come to this point? Only a knowledge and understanding of history, and at least a basic grasp of the development of our culture’s leading ideas, can provide an answer to that question.

But we don’t teach history or philosophy or elementary logic very well anymore. Most Americans these days are ignorant of history, or worse, they “know” so much about history that just isn’t so. Given our culture’s values and priorities, in the end there’s probably not much incentive to teach those things — all the easier to separate a fool from his money or persuade him to support this party or that politician, I suppose.

Nevertheless, in this and the next few columns, I want to attempt a survey or overview of the history of the modern age’s pre-eminent and defining political philosophy, liberalism. In sketching this attempted overview, I intend to draw upon some of the ideas of Catholic political scientist Thomas Storck. I think Storck’s studies provide insight that can help us discern the underlying causes and reasons for the culture war now raging between the U.S. Catholic Church and the administration of President Barack Obama.

Contrary to what some have said, this culture war clearly isn’t about partisan politics, as if the bishops are Republicans and simply are angling to get the federal government back in the hands of the GOP. Only someone unfamiliar with the history and the political outlook and agenda of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, or perhaps someone pushing his own partisan agenda, would advance so silly a notion. Sure, the conflict is necessarily political, but not in a partisan sense.

Page 2 of 2 - Also, when I refer to liberalism, I don’t speak of the Democratic Party’s prevailing ideology in contradistinction from that of the Republican Party. Rather, I mean classical liberalism. As I’ve previously noted in this column space, historically speaking both American liberalism and conservatism are developments or degraded forms of classical liberalism, which enshrined the principles of limited government, the rule of law, and individual liberty, such as religious freedom, free speech, a free press and free markets.

Now, Storck says there have been three ways in which liberalism has “assaulted” and deconstructed the old Christian social polity that had been dominant in Europe until the Renaissance. Those three “assaults,” he says, were economic, political and anthropological (in the philosophical sense, not in the sense of the modern science of anthropology). In other words, classical liberalism contradicted and has successfully overthrown traditional Christian doctrine regarding economic morality, political philosophy and the nature and dignity of the human person.

It’s an epic story, prefaced by the fatal fracturing of the unity of Christendom in the early 1500s. Next time I’ll attempt to survey that story as we take a look at the liberal revolution in economic theory and practice.